This is, perversely, good news for Britain, Australia, Japan, Europe, and other countries being cut off that would once have seen themselves as close allies of the United States. It shows us what the future may hold if AI is the strategically and economically decisive technology of the 21st century and is controlled by the US and China. It is good news because *it may be happening early enough to give us time to act.* I think this will be rescinded pretty soon, but it’s a sign of things to come. In a future where frontier models cannot be used outside the US, our industries and economies will fall behind and American businesses may not be able to operate overseas. We won’t be able to defend ourselves militarily with defence systems built on obsolete software. Europe 2031 is a good scenario of what a future like this could mean: europe2031.ai Some of the things we need to do are ‘no regrets’ measures we should do anyway. But some are genuinely costly and risky. We need cheap electricity – powered by gas, coal (this is costly, coal is very bad), deregulated nuclear fission – whatever can provide *cheap, reliable, 24/7* power. This almost certainly excludes wind power, which is enormously expensive and unreliable. We need projects to be able to connect to the grid in days rather than years by paying for fast-track connections. We need to make it incredibly easy to build data centres, with the property taxes retained locally and hypothecated for local tax cuts so there is some direct benefit for locals. This doesn’t need to be nationwide. We need to create new regulatory regimes for innovative businesses that give them the right to hire and fire staff with ease. The difficulty and cost of firing staff is one of the main reasons Europe has fallen behind so badly. We need to create a parallel employment regime that companies and workers can opt in to: worksinprogress.co/issue/why… Even though I think it will probably fail, I think we should probably try to create a good, non-American frontier AI lab. I am quite pessimistic about this – even extremely well-resourced, innovative software companies are struggling to do this. But the stakes are so high that not trying seems foolish. One thing that might work in our favour is the number of brilliant AI engineers who are not US citizens, who under the current export controls do not have access to Mythos/Fable even if they live and work in the US. What happens to Demis Hassabis, Ilya Sutskever, Andrej Karpathy, and the many other Europeans, Canadians, etc who are working on AI models in Britain and America who are affected by this? I do not think we should force our own companies to use model, because this would exacerbate their economic weakness – this lab should have to compete on an even playing field. I am deeply sceptical that this can work, but we cannot rule it out. If we do it, it has to be able to pay US salaries, operate without political constraints. worksinprogress.co/issue/how… It is cope to tell yourself that Trump is an aberration or that these export controls are a one-off. To repeat, I think these specific controls will be lifted quickly and it will be easy to move on and forget it happened. But this is a look into a potential future. Every one of us that is not a US citizen is at risk. The standard political divides do not apply here; the question is whether you grasp the enormity of AI as a technology. We have to act!

We often complain about 'America-brain', the tendency of Twitter-reared Europeans to misapply American framings to their own countries. In the case of housing, however, America-braining might actually be a good thing. In fact, Europeans could do with being a lot more America-brained than they are today. worksinprogress.co/issue/sho… Lots of Americans believe that: - Their country has a housing shortage; - This shortage is mostly caused by land-use restrictions, especially suburban zoning; - Suburban zoning is caused mostly by NIMBYism; - Expensive environmental and social obligations often make housing shortages worse by making development unviable (the 'everything-bagel'). British people are less likely to believe these things, and continental Europeans hardly talk about them at all. But with some caveats, they are probably just as true of Europe as they are of America. In particular: - European countries not only have housing shortages, but by some measures they have worse shortages than America; - Contrary to popular belief, most European countries have extensive low-density suburbs, from which development is excluded by zoning; - NIMBYism is indeed less visible in Europe, but probably only because nobody is threatening suburbia with densification in the first place. YIMBYism will of course need to be modified if it is to be successfully transplanted to Europe. But Europe *does* need a YIMBY movement, and it can learn much from what the American YIMBYs have already got right.

I have always, and will continue, to stand with the Ukrainian people and unequivocally condemn Putin’s illegal and brutal invasion. I voted against the Ukraine Support Act because of its inclusion of broad economic sanctions. Time and again, sanctions like these fail to achieve their stated goals while inflicting real suffering on ordinary people. Opposing Russian aggression does not require us to support policies that punish ordinary civilians who did not ask for this war. The foreign policy establishment continues to return to the same failed playbook and expects different results. Economic sanctions fail to achieve their desired goals and in most cases are counterproductive to ending war. I remain committed to supporting diplomacy, peace, and justice for the Ukrainian people affected by this horrific conflict. But I could not in good conscience support legislation that wages economic warfare on innocent civilians.

I mean, there is no solution because it’s not a real problem. You just have to watch it on tv like most fans have for decades.

From 1966 to 2025 we dropped sterile flies over South America that ate screwworm and thus prevented them from spreading, but the le epic efficient cracked coders at DOGE thought this was a silly waste of the ~0 dollars it cost us.

‼️Rubio: Russia may not ever be able to militarily achieve the objectives they're now demanding in negotiations. The Ukrainians have made battlefield gains over the last month. Ukraine has also become increasingly effective at conducting long-range strikes deep inside Russia and against critical nodes of the Russian economy. And according to the Department of War, this is the first time ever that Russia has more deaths than casualties. So not only are the Ukrainians bravely fighting, they're effectively fighting. The role we want to play is to see whether there's a way to negotiate a peaceful solution. Ultimately, the end of this war is going to be negotiated. But it's been difficult because the demands both sides have set for ending it remain far apart.

Wonderful to see! Thank you for sharing the truth for all to see. We should be friends, allies, and trading partners with Russia and much friendlier to the rest of the world. And keep our tax dollars at home to be spent for Americans and stay out of foreign wars.

Using the evidence from Auckland's upzoning, we infer that a 1% increase in housing stock reduces rents by 3.6%. Rents fell by 21.6% and the housing stock increased by 6.9%, so the elasticity of rents to housing stock is ln(1-0.216)/ln(1 0.069) = -3.6.

There are early signs that monogamy is on the upswing once again, even amongst groups that are currently less monogamous than average.

Southwark’s Planning Chair opposed a 860 home development because locals couldn’t afford the new homes. It’s a common misconception. So I’ve decided to explain the evidence showing how luxury flats can make housing more affordable on the Old Kent Road.

Panic among Russia's elite this morning, after last night's massive Ukrainian attack on Moscow. Russian Senator and former head of Roscosmos explains how they are now defenseless from stopping Ukraine's growing attacks that will soon include missiles.